


Four Hundred and Eighty, Give or Take

by TychoBrandt



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Bury your dead deep, But never facedown, Goodbye Arcadia Bay, Your ashes will make fine soil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:12:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 9,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TychoBrandt/pseuds/TychoBrandt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max lives, Chloe lives. Good for them. Who dies? That's not rhetorical. </p><p>Who dies? Who will stay to watch their bones shine white through the mud?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cold

Chris looks westward.

She knows, as she watches the sun slowly descend to meet a distant ocean, that her eyes will burn. She knows that when night comes, her retinae will be so overexposed she'll be stumbling blindly through starlessness.

But Chris looks westward, her fists thrust into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt, chin tucked just slightly into the collar. A breeze snaps past, throwing strands of her hair and chilling her ears.

She imagines that it comes from the Pacific Ocean.

\---

They were so damn busy with their lives, they hadn't noticed.

Four days without a call from them.

I mean, who could blame them? Modern life is an involved thing. Work, school, making dinner, picking the kids up, meetings, practice. A single oversight can be forgiven, right?

After all--what was four days? Sometimes it'd be two or three without a call or even a text. Why worry over four?

\---

On the fifth day, a call comes, but not from them. 

Her mom answers it, since Chris doesn't really like answering phones. What fourteen year old does?

Chris comes down from her room, heads into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. She glances over at her mom. "Who was it?"

But her mom is staring out the window.

\---

More calls come. More calls made. They have to make sure.

When her mom tells her, Chris doesn't react, at first. Because, well, it's ridiculous. An obvious mistake. 

Russell and Jess, dead? Chris almost reprimands her mother for joking about things like that, but stops at her expression. 

\---

Hours pass instead of days. Chris wants to answer the phone, now, but every time her mom tells her "let me handle it, Christina". 

Words from a day ago begin to slowly arise in Chris' mind. 

\---

Less than a day.

They were in Arcadia Bay for less than a day. Going from Seattle to Eugene and onward down the coast. Just staying long enough to see what few sights that tiny town could offer. 

Pre-honeymoon, they called it. Well, what they eventually called it. They wanted to take Chris along, but with school, it didn't work out. Chris' mom said she wanted at least one daughter to annoy, anyway.

\---

The emergency crews had seen nothing like it. 'Nothing like it' was the new motto of Arcadia Bay, after that storm. 

Rolled in, made an impression, rolled out. All in the course of a single night. 

The same night Jess and Russell were driving through.

\---

Details were slow to come. 

A gust of wind knocked the car off course--just enough for it to run off the road, into the mud, into a ravine. Trees had fallen nearby in a tangle. The ravine was overflowing with both water and debris.

When they found the car, it was upside down.

\--- 

"So... you and Russ, huh?"

Jess turns to look at her sister, expression amused. "Yeah, _me and Russ._ Jess and Russ. Sounds like a bad sitcom or something, doesn't it?"

"I dunno." Chris reaches out, tugging on the branches of the trees they pass. She brings back a few pine needles, sticky and sharp but smelling good. 

They walk in silence, letting the birds carry the conversation for them. 

"Give him a chance," Jess says, ducking under a low bough. "He's a good guy. I wouldn't love him otherwise." She pauses for a moment. "He reminds me a little of you, actually?"

Chris rolls her eyes, incredulous.

"Quiet, thoughtful, a little weird. But!" She says, finger uplifted, cutting off Chris' objection, "nice through and through." 

"I'll take your word for it," Chris mumbles. "Biased as you are."

"Oh, you don't have to. He's coming over for dinner."

\---

Turns out Jess had better taste than Chris gave her credit for.

I mean, this Russ guy sucked at Devil May Cry, but no one's perfect, right?

\---

They've stuffed the car with luggage. Chris' mom won't let them fill the back entirely, though. She wants them to be able to use the rearview mirror.

Makes sense.

Hugs all around, then. Jess promises to take a lot of pictures for Chris to Photoshop. Russ promises to bring back something at least slightly interesting from every town or city. Chris' mom promises to leave the lovebirds alone. 

Chris doesn't make any promises. She doesn't see the need. 

\---

"So, we were talking about baby names--"

"Oh, gross."

"Chris, you can stand to at least pretend to be mature about this--"

"Your procreation and offspring is _your_ business!"

"Wow, put it like that, why don't you. Anyway... Russ and I were thinking, you know, maybe if we had a girl... we could name her Christine."

Chris tilts her head to the side. "What, to confuse everyone?"

"Hey, I like the name, Russ likes the name... but it's _almost_ your name. So, it's only right that I ask permission."

Chris shakes her head. Her family is ridiculous. "Permission granted."

\---

Chris looks westward.

The sun dips below the horizon, and darkness settles over the world.

In the dark, she thinks, she could cry. No one would see her, no one would know.

But the earth is wet enough.

So she doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _On that Friday, Max and Chloe watched Arcadia Bay return to the sea._
> 
> _On that Friday, you, protagonist, were off living your life. Probably having a drink with Sarah._
> 
> _On that Friday, Chris was likely playing videogames in her room._
> 
> _Life is funny, like that. But let's not play the blame game. By what insane calculus can we measure a human life, anyway?_
> 
> _Max made mistakes. You made mistakes. Time won't forgive you, but I will._


	2. Bright

Thunder rolls over the world, low and slow and deep like water in dark places. Helen's ears perk up.

She is at the back door in a moment and throws it wide open, not giving a singular damn for the howling wind or raging rain.

"JESS MASON!"

Say what you will, but Goddamn, the woman can _yell._

Helen peers out into the dense cloudfall, out into the line of trees encroaching upon the backyard.

And there, between the dark and swaying trunks, is a furious slash of red. 

As another thunderclap cleaves the clouds and burns the sky, Jess bolts from the treeline and barrels into the house, all muddy boots and rainsoaked denim. "Hey, mom," she says, nonchalantly shrugging out of her favorite red jacket. Right onto the dry floor.

"Don't you 'hey' me." Helen looms over Jess. "What did I say about climbing trees in the middle of storms?"

"But I wasn't--"

Helen plucks a piece of bark and a few leaves from Jess' hair.

"... Uh."

Jess was born in the rain.

When she was a wise old woman and a grandmother of many, Helen thought, she'd probably die in the rain, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I wonder how long ago that was._


	3. There

Johns isn't in hospitals very often.

Once, for appendicitis. Another time for food poisoning when he was really young. But that's about it. Hasn't broken a single bone in his body--but, well, it'll happen eventually. A rite of passage when you play football, after all.

So when he wakes up in a hospital bed, Johns is understandably confused.

He looks around, looks at the sheets, looks at the IV stand, looks at the catheter in his arm.

He blinks a few times.

He watches the drip-drip of the saline--well, he hopes its saline.

Navigating through the fog of what seems to be a hangover from Hell, he tries to remember.

\---

Of course, a name like 'Mortimer St. Johns' is too damned much for a kid who only started speaking at four years. So Johns had to do. 

Johns was the rare type of person to be called by his last name by his parents. He wore this as a badge of pride, partly because it was one of the few badges he had.

\---

When Johns was eight years old, his unthinking shithead of a neighbor lost his grip on his pit bull.

That was the day Johns realized he could run.

\---

See, Johns isn't what you would popularly call a... well, an intellectual. Sure, he likes books, but more the _concept_ of books versus reading. And maybe he couldn't tell you the difference between a novel and novella. And yeah, he can't read cursive, but really, who can?

But to think Johns an idiot is, well, idiotic in itself. Sure, all through grade school teachers kept trying to shunt him into special education, but they just didn't _get_ it. Johns wasn't slow, he was _deliberate._ And that's a whole three syllables more than slow.

After all, Johns can measure anything. Point at something, point at something else, and within three ticks of a watch he'll tell you the distance within an inch (he doesn't really get the metric system). The guy can ace your geometry test but take a literal hour to explain the Pythagorean Theorem. Rubik's cube? A joke. Probably why he's never dropped a pass once at Blackwell. Warren's the one who told him the term-- spatial cognition. Mental rotation.

Nice guy, Warren. Really doesn't deserve to get shit on the way he does.

\---

See, odd thing. Johns was sure he'd hate Courtney. She was the archetypal (see? He's not an idiot) preppy girl that had always given him shit.

So the first time she tried to eviscerate him with some degrading comment in class ("Interesting how someone can be fast and slow")-- he didn't need to think, he had years to deliberate on counters like this-- he easily snapped back with something equally trenchant. Everyone stopped, conversation died in-air and hit the desks, Kate gasped, Hayden laughed, Max stared, Victoria's mouth hung open, and the teacher yelled at Johns to step outside. As he got up and shouldered his backpack, he shot a look at Courtney-- and she shot one back.

And there was a smirk on her lips.

Later, he realized it wasn't the smirk that set him off. It was those lips.

\---

And somehow a competition of more and more creative insults turned into a competition to find more and more creative ways to hang out on the supposed pretense of, you know, being rivals. Yeah.

Well, of course he went with her to the mall and helped her pick out stuff she'd look good in. "She needs all the help she can get!" Johns would claim, eyes flicking left and right. That's what rivals do, right? Passive-aggression? 

And there's no real reason that sometimes Courtney comes out of the changing room wearing something a little too small, or that certain shade of blue Johns likes for some reason. No reason. Not to see him redden a bit and turn away and mutter "try something else."

And there's no reason that, if one were to catalog Johns' growingly elaborate put-downs, he stopped using Courtney's sexuality as a basis for insults, and he'd snap at anyone who did. No reason. 

\---

Now, Johns isn't what you'd call popular. He's certainly _known_. Not like Zachary-fuckin'-Riggins the Goddamn quarterback who gets free tickets to the movies and eats for free half the time since the football team is one of the very few things Arcadia Bay has going for it. Running back just doesn't sound as cool as quarterback. Same number of syllables, though, so that's something.

And _known_ is generally the cusp of Vortex Club material. Catching footballs and running fast and jumping over entire humans is all well and good, but knowing the right people and being in the right places and saying (or not saying) the right things? Much more so.

Zach and Logan vouched for him, of course. Hayden sung his praises too, probably because Johns was the only one willing to get up at five thirty to run every Goddamn morning (in reality, it was because of Johns' obscene skill at FPS videogames, which Hayden determined was an indicator of hidden potential).

And Courtney... well. You can imagine. 

But it was Victoria, ever Victoria, who would decide his fate. 

\---

He stands out there for a good seven minutes. Seven minutes and thirty two seconds. It's two fourteen AM. 

Alright, that's enough deliberation. Just... fuck, just _do it,_ man. Shit! Fuck! Okay!

He reaches up and gently raps his knuckles against the window.

And waits.

And Courtney lifts up her window. He can smell the pumpkin spice latte from here. Probably three or four cups of them.

"What are you doing? Did they forget to lock you in?"

"Why are you still up? Don't you need your beauty sleep?"

Courtney sighs. "Victoria has a paper due in the morning. I've finished mine, but--"

Johns lifts up a hand. "Come down."

He sees the play of her face--Goddamn, even wired on caffeine and with circles under her eyes, she looks beautiful. "I can't--"

Johns spreads his arms. "Yeah you can. I'll catch you." 

"That's not what I meant," she huffs, but Johns just grins that stupid grin of his. 

Rolling her eyes theatrically, she mumbles something about him being clingy and needy and obviously being up to no good, enticing a girl out of her room at night, how scandalous--but there's that little smirk again that makes Johns' blood spike.

"Don't drop me."

"I'll drop you if I want to."

She puts her hands on her hips, squinting down at him. Johns simply shrugs.

And with a properly ladylike squeal she lands in his arms, and he catches her effortlessly. 

In the darkness, under the stars, they can lace their hands together and walk and nuzzle and not worry about anyone or anything. 

"See that?" Johns points up. "That's Lyra. The brightest star there, that one's... Vega, I think." 

Courtney leans into him. "It's so pretty," she murmurs. 

"Not--not as--" Fuck. Cringeworthy, man. Johns looks down at her, already preparing himself with a comeback and counter-comeback--

But she's just looking up at him, starlight in her eyes, lips parted.

For many days afterward, that kiss is all Johns can deliberate on.

\---

Johns shakes his head. He looks around the hospital room--there's got to be a button, right? You push the button, a nurse comes. That's a thing, right? It's in all those TV shows.

Okay, come on. Only three minutes and--and--twenty one... twenty two seconds have passed. Figure it out. Why are you here? Where were you last? Backtrack! Rotate!

\--- 

The End of the World Party is dead, long live the End of the World Party; for here begins the afterparty.

Maybe it was the song, or the shitty beer, or that weird pill Logan gave him, but Johns dances with Courtney and his hands moved free and her hips grind against him and he didn't give a shit who sees. 

Now the revelers are trickling back into the dorms, oblivious to the rain and wind, to pass out or vomit a small intestine's worth of alcohol or fuck or who knows who cares because Courtney is on Johns' arm and holy shit he's on fire.

A gust of wind throws a handful of icy needles at them, and Johns pulls Courtney close. But the wind keeps picking up speed, and the rain comes harder. Courtney's laughing, pulling Johns by the hand to the girls' dorm, and Johns feels like he might split his head he's grinning so hard--

And then a fist of wind strikes them both to the grass, and as Johns tumbles he sees the other partyers falling. The rain's coming in sheets, now. Big knife blades of water. Black clouds moving like--like--

He gets up--you don't play years of football without learning how to get the fuck up--and pulls Courtney to her feet. He yells something to her-- maybe "are you okay" or "we have to go" or something--and they try to force their way to the dorm.

They're at the steps, soaking, freezing, stunned-- when Johns, master of spatial perception, observes two things:

_1\. Hayden coming out of nowhere to shove him with the most spectacular pass interference he's ever seen_

And

_2\. A tree branch the size of Johns' torso coming at him at approximately sixty five--_

\---

Johns throws his bedsheet off--

And looks down at nothing.

He blinks.

He... felt them. He can feel them right now! He saw them under the sheet! How--how the fuck--

He blinks, again.

He pulls the blanket over his legs--his legs that are definitely, undeniably, absolutely still there--and waits. Whatever's in that IV bag must be doing this. Or that pill. He's tripping. Yeah. Everything is fine.

Courtney is fine, too, Johns reassures himself in a dreary haze, tamping down the panic. Of course she is. How could she not be?

Someone will explain this to him.

He just needs to wait.

Deliberate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So Max let the storm kill some people. Oh well, death comes for us all._
> 
> _But those who were condemned to live? Those who have to stay and pick up the pieces?_
> 
> _At least the dead can rest._
> 
> _Produced this in maybe fifteen minutes. The thought was there._


	4. Glance

Johns pokes his head out into the corridor. 

Looks left. Looks right. Empty. Good.

He steps out of Courtney's room and carefully closes the door behind him, easing it shut so softly it doesn't even _click_. He wipes his palms on his jeans, even though they're not sweaty, and he's never had his palms actually sweat, but it seemed like the thing to do.

He'd prefer to depart via window, really, he would--comings and goings by window are romantic, right?-- but it's too conspicuous with the morning light and--

He runs into someone as he turns around.

"Sorry," he blurts automatically.

Max Caulfield blinks sleepily up at him, pupils suddenly pinpointing like a camera shutter. Even in this light, Johns can see a blue vision of himself reflected in her big eyes, his body framed perfectly next to Courtney's room nameplate. Her eyes flick back, then forth. Just once.

"Um," he says.

"Oh," she says.

Dread burrows itself somewhere between Johns' liver and spleen. Okay. She's in her sleepwear. Hair all over the place. Breath smelling like eight hours. Maybe she won't remember this. Think it was a dream. Yeah. Keep it cool. "Evening, Max." Johns' brain rotates slightly upon its axis. "Er, maybe now it'd be 'morning' instead." What the fuck are you saying? Jesus Christ!

"... Yeah," she offers politely, rubbing the back of her neck. Her eyes are so damn big. No light escapes them. And this won't escape her. She can’t dust for fingerprints with her eyeballs, but Goddamn if Johns doesn’t feel like a crime scene.

He licks his lips nervously, but that was a mistake, as they taste of Courtney. "... Okay, so-- we didn’t—we, um, I know this looks like--"

But Max just shakes her head. "I... I won't tell." Her voice is husky with sleep. 

"... You won't?"

Max shakes her head. 

Johns nods his head like a hanged man. "O... okay, yeah. Thanks, Max," he says, and he's off.

She's alright, that Max Caulfield.

When Johns gets back to his dorm room, he feels like ten pounds of water weight has strained through his pores. If he had run into Kate Marsh? Oh man. _Oh man._ The goosebumps won't go away.

\---

When Victoria describes her as a pretentious hipster pseudointellectual faux-ingénue, Johns just nods with an "uh huh" instead of asking what the fuck an 'ingénue' is. He files away that vocabulary for later. Victoria's fascination with French agitates Johns' Anglo-Saxon-rooted brain to no end.


	5. Runoff

They're both standing on the edge of the parking lot, watching people mill about the red van.

"You said you would!"

"Look, I'm not afraid of blood. Or needles. Or scalpels--"

"Then what's the holdup?"

"I don't like the idea of... a part of _me_ being in other people, okay? It's just... ugh. Weird."

"Oh, come on. You're made of--"

"The same water from the dinosaurs, you said that already." 

"Then let's _go._ "

Karli is many things. But she's not a coward, and she doesn't go back on her word. She's also left handed, which people called her a devil child in grade school over, and now she wears that title proudly. But that's rather beside the point. 

Elise looks at her expectantly, arms crossed.

Karli looks down at the embossed and colorful flyer in her hands, now quite creased after having lived in her backpack for a week. A smiling family looks up at her with dead eyes.

_DONATE BLOOD FOR ARCADIA BAY_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tragedy really can bring out the best in people._
> 
> _So I've heard._


	6. Pull

"Keep an eye out for whales," someone said before they launched. It wasn't a joke. A young whale, lost or confused, had rammed into a fishing trawler the day before. 

Rick peers into the net. A good half of the fish are dead, already rotting and probably crawling with parasites. He grimaces at the smell--and he's smelt some weird shit. 

Stetson stares out into the horizon.

"Something's coming," he says quietly.

\---

_I'm not wearing underwear._

Johns stares down at the message, his brain rotating very slowly, very carefully. 

He bites his lip, licks the inside of his teeth.

Steadying his forefinger (yes, he types with only one finger, hunt-and-peck style), Johns crafts his response. Carefully. Because if he misspells anything here he'll fucking kill himself.

And... send.

_I don't believe you. You'll have to show me._

Courtney locks onto him from across the room with a smouldering look.

Johns looks back coolly. His insides would make Pompeii look like a church candle.

\---

When he looked up "blue balls" on UrbanDictionary, he scoffed. Yeah, sure. Like that's a real thing.

Now, Johns is a believer.

His balls are bluer than the seven fucking seas. Captain Nemo would not dare to fathom those dark depths, and Ahab would lower his harpoon in awe.

\---

It's expensive.

Johns doesn't give a shit.

Sterling silver wrought carefully into the likeness of feathers. Turquoise with deep blue-green veins.

The bracelet is heavy in his hand. A good heavy. It's... a new feeling.

"This one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Everyone seems too preoccupied with these art school kids..._
> 
> _Well, Goddamn, what of the fishermen, then? Call them Ishmael? No, call them Isaac, but you, angel of God, never stopped Abraham._
> 
> _Translation: had this sitting around. Take it._


	7. Tide

It's been hours, and Karli's arm still hurts. 

She rubs at it absently, her fingernails snagging on the bandage. She's changed since she's gotten home from school, but it feels like she hasn't--not with that gauze still gripping her elbow, bunched up and sticky. Blasting music in her ears isn't taking her mind off of it. Especially not when she can, by curse of her vivid imagination, associate every second stanza with a storm.

After the whole thing, she felt... lighter. Not a 'weight off your shoulders' lighter, but literally so. Like it took a little bit longer for her feet to reach the ground as she walked. 

The crumpled flyer lies on her desk, facedown, just out of reach. She doesn't need it anymore. But throwing it away feels sacrilegious, somehow.

The kids at her school had taken to wearing short sleeves, cold as it was this week. They showed off their bandages with pride, the boys boasting just how much blood they gave and how little it affected them and how the nurse right out of med school had been checking out their biceps. Of course.

Karli spins slowly in her computer chair, knees pulled up to her chest. She considers opening up a local news site and checking on Arcadia Bay, but... her hand hovers, polarized, above her suddenly ferromagnetic mouse.

Who would her blood go to? A firefighter who got hurt rescuing someone? A mom or dad driving fast to get home to their kids? A newborn baby that got hit by debris?

... Whose veins would she be swimming in? Whose heart would beat with hers, miles away, seconds apart?

It's ridiculous, really. But she could drive to Arcadia Bay and sit outside the hospital, watch the people file in and out, and one of them would have her inside them. 

She scowls. Christ, she's getting too emo over this. They'll probably just throw her blood away. Too many white blood cells or something.

A lot of kids in her class have talked about going to help the relief efforts over the next few weekends. The survivors are rushing to rebuild as much of the town as they can before winter sets in, but a good number of the survivors have just... left. Drove into the sunrise and never looked back.

Karli can't really blame them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thought I forgot about this, huh?_


	8. First

Hannah has been awake for fifty-two hours, and she cannot sleep.

She sits in the seat of her (well, it's not hers, technically, but it may as well be) ambulance, fingers laced over the steering wheel. She hums something--and the tune wavers and shifts into something else as soon as she tries to figure out what she's humming. She feels... off. Her eyes feel heavy in her head, but her bones feel so light they may as well be elsewhere. So be it.

She rubs her fingers over one another, picking at her nails. Her hands feel strange without a second skin of nitrile. Her mouth and nose feel strange without the warm cocoon of air from her sanitary mask. When she breathes, she smells blood. She's not sure from where. She'll need to find out, eventually. But for now, she sits and watches.

Arcadia Bay Medical Center hums like a concrete hive. 

She watches the people moving outside--police, firefighters, nurses, doctors, staff, EMTs, paramedics, ordinary people, _people._ It's like an odd dance; everyone has somewhere to go, someone to speak to, something to do. A plan. A sense of control over everything, no matter how tenuous the grasp. 

... No, she can see them, now. Some gripping at arms, sleeves, tapping at shoulders, asking if they've seen a certain someone. A son, a daughter, a sibling, a spouse, a friend, a neighbor. And every time, it's the same; a blank look, a short string of words, a shake of the head. 

Hannah sighs. This isn't what she expected, really. They were running short on EMTs down in Newport, so she thought, what's a second job, really? Sure, it's not even a job--she's not getting paid, it's all volunteer--but it'll look good for when she finally scrapes together the money for med school. 

She watches as a wheeled stretcher is pushed past her side window by a grim-faced duo. A sheet is pulled taut over the stretcher. The shape it outlines is human... almost.

So here she was, along with everyone else from the surrounding counties. This was it: the worst possible scenario that everyone prepared for but everyone wished would never happen. But wishes count for little in the cosmic entropic lottery, she muses.

Her phone vibrates; she recognizes the pattern. Her boyfriend checking up on her--probably an old text, though, as the mobile cell trucks have had trouble getting through all the rubble. Hannah's not in any real danger, of course, but he worries. And Hannah wants to text back, sure, but... it might break the reverie. Remind her that this world where the people you see are just as likely to be dead as alive was the same one she shared with Jake.

Hours ago, they said the morgue was to capacity. Beyond capacity. They started looking for funeral homes that were still standing. 

She leans her skull against the headrest, her damp hair sticking. She recalls how she wanted to be a vet when she was ten years old. A puppy-kitten vet, specifically. She smiles at that. If anyone had looked through the windshield at that moment, they would've stopped, confused, and wondered if they were somewhere else, anywhere but here.

Hannah steps out of the ambulance, closes the door, and dons her eleventh pair of gloves.

She will sleep, eventually. Until then, she will make sure the dead do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I just can't let this go, can I?_


	9. Flow

Luke balances his jaw on an upturned palm.

He's bored. Well, more specifically, he's sick with something contagious (coughing, stuffed nose, mucus everywhere, etc.), so he's cloistered in his own home, so he's bored. That's the longform, anyway.

It's been a week, and even at his age with his attention span, all the pirated videogames the Internet can provide can't keep him occupied. He's been so desperate he read a _book_ of all things, and he hasn't read one to completion outside of school since... well, shit, he can't even remember.

So he trawls through the great grey morass of the Internet--he's already jacked off twice today, and that's become boring too--looking for anything to fill his empty cup of time.

He consults Facebook--but between vacuous arguments about politics or sports or people shouting their horoscopes to the world, that loses its appeal as well. The cost of having high school seniors as your peer group, he thought sullenly. 

Luke blows his nose, throws the balled tissue over his shoulder, and scowls at yet another profile picture.

Not due to the person occupying it, if it can be believed. But because of the tiny lighthouse in the left-hand corner.

"Pray for Arcadia Bay." He sees it on people's background banners, as random proclamations. It annoys him in the way everything is annoying when you're already in a shitty mood.

How many of those people--Luke does not index Facebook friends under "friends"--actually gave a singular fuck about Arcadia Bay, anyway? How many people had actually been there? So it's a few hours (give or take) west, so what? Bad things happen all the time. Car crashes, disease, old age, hold ups gone bad, wrong place wrong time.

Just a big circle-jerk of who can be the most 'compassionate.' People dredging up pictures from years and years ago of Arcadia Bay, going on and on about how it was 'magical' or 'mystical' or 'changed them.' Bullshit. It's been a fucking month! Why are people still all choked up over this?

He glanced at the time--another hour before he could take any more medicine. Damn the FDA for protecting his kidneys.

This isn't productive. He gets up--his head swims, full of mucus as it is--and stumbles out of his room, blinking in the sunlight spilling down the hall.

"Pray for the bay," he mutters thickly to an empty house. "Why pray for something that's gone?"

That's the most poetic thing he's thought in a week. He'll forget it in an hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Arcadia Bay was a home to you. But to so many others, it was just a dot on a map._


	10. Revenant

He's not much to look at. Not too tall, but lean and hard, as if he were iron hammered too thin.

Darren Siegert became a cop because he cared too much. Suffice to say, he's the worst kind of cop, the kind that lasts a few years at most before going brittle and cracking at the edges. But he remained, his eyes just a duller shade of rust.

\---

He's the youngest cop on the force. That's not saying much--the median age of the Arcadia Bay Police Department's finest is about fifty or so. But at a fourth of a century, he's out of place. Bleak planes where the others have smile lines.

Darren didn't win the moniker "Switch" for ambidexterity or an impatience with TV channels. It was after he soundly beat down a drunk asshole twice his size when he was still at the academy, back in Salem. It was unsettling to see, a man whose will seemed too great for his body, how his bloodied hands shook but the rest of him was stock still.

"He's like a switch--he's small, but when he pulls back you better start running," one of the old boys on the force had said with a worldwise chuckle. And so the name stuck. Switch. Dumb, but there's worse, he supposes. Everyone calls Richard "ol' big Dick," for example. His wife thought it was hilarious. Richard didn't, for some reason.

\---

Why did he come back?

Most kids that grow up in Arcadia Bay either leave or become consigned to the sea like their ancestors before them. Or scrape by in what little tourism the town has to offer.

When Darren left, well, everyone thought his back would be the last they'd see. But return he did, in a police uniform and an overpolished badge, just in time for the announcement of Pan Estates. 

They didn't know whether to feel joy or dread. 

\---

It's a small department with a small budget, so it has a small shooting range. Not like they thought much about it at the time--way back when the place was built, if you wanted to test a gun, you just went out and shot at the trees or the water or the blacks. Now you can't piss in peace without some environmentalist from the east coast raining hellfire.

Doesn't matter much, as Darren's one of the few that ever use the range. It's a simple ritual--twelve shots a day. One whole cylinder, a reload, then yet another cylinder. No more, no less. 

Maybe he should have an autoloader in wondernine like everyone else, but the other cops think it's kind of funny. They haven't filled a bad guy full of holes in years--who cares? 

\--- 

He thinks about money often. He dwells on the small talk he'll make with the teller he's known since his parents would drag him to the bank as a child. 

He thinks about his old family house that he still lives in, albeit alone. Would he one day take a wife home to that very same two-bedroom, two-bath with the long dark hallway? Could he even find a wife in a town like this?

He thinks, and drives, and stares at the trees that line the roads.

\---

Blackwell Academy is an oasis of iniquity in the desert of injustice.

Or... something like that, he thinks. Darren's not a poet, failed English twice (eventually passed with a C+, thank the extra credit), but he can read you your Miranda rights like your life (in prison or otherwise) depends on it.

But why is Blackwell a black hole of social morality (stretching there, Switch.)? Sound ordinances just don't matter around Blackwell's walls. Or open container laws. Or parking violations. Or indecent exposure. Nothing matters, really.

He's put the local liquor stores on notice for fake IDs, but that was before the old timers pointed out that they don't even check, and no one's going to roll through grainy black-and-white CCTV footage for an high school beer sale. 5% ABV? Who the fuck you kidding, Switch?

Besides--you want those Prescott grants for the town? Want a new car? New uniform that fits? New revolver? Enough money to finally fix your house's foundation?

So Darren grips the steering wheel of his aging patrol car and drives past that campus, looking out over the mountain range of his knuckles.

\---

The Two Whales diner.

Darren frowns into his coffee. Bit of a misnomer. Just one whale, now. William's gone, and you can feel it in every inch of this place. Darren doesn't know if whales mate for life, but, well... Joyce and William. What a pair.

The coffee at Up-All-Nite is cheaper, sure. But Darren can't help but patronize this place. Joyce is too kind, after all. Her daughter... well. Darren sighs. People mourn in different ways.

\---

He drives late at night, listening to the sound of pavement and five thousand revolutions a minute. He calls it a patrol, officially. But it's just therapy.

He sees a flicker of red, upright like a candle flame, making its way along the side of the road.

He watches it, mesmerized.

It's a person. He slows, gets out, waits. 

"It's two AM," he obviates. 

She doesn't say anything.

"Do you need a ride home?"

Her eyes glint with suspicion.

"Blackwell?" he asks, noting her hooded sweatshirt with BIGFOOTS printed across the front.

It isn't until she's in the backseat, she asks:

"What are you going to do to me?"

It's distant and resigned and makes Darren's skin fucking crawl.

"I'm taking you home."

She looks out the window.

\---

They find him, eventually. It takes a few days.

In the runoff, his body is tangled in driftwood and telephone wire and roof tile. It was easy to pass him over, at first--his limbs were twisted this way in that, he was more puzzle than human--but someone glanced down, and with the right lighting--

"Oh my God."

His eyes catch the light, a brighter shade of rust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This was laying about. Here. Another death for your conscience._


	11. Rise

Some romances burn. Others smoulder.

And there are those that go down like Operation Rolling Thunder, and all you can do is run for cover.

That's the great love story of Ethan and Olivia. You know the cycle--meet at university, Olivia's the flint, Ethan's the steel. Sparks; a firestorm of lovemaking and passion, married within two years. 

There's an old English saying: quickly come, quickly go. 

This is no surprise to anyone with a passing interest in anthropology. The sex is spectacular, the fights are spectacular (woe to the neighbors). I love yous and I hate yous in equal measure. Mountains and valleys, not a single steppe in sight.

They commit the prehistoric sin: believing having a child will stabilize them.

Thus Julius is born, the prophet meant to unite two feuding kingdoms. 

But children make poor martyrs, and Ethan and Olivia could never decide who would stay home. 

\---

Half time with mom, half time with dad. It was what was "best for the child," so said childless therapists everywhere.

Were the mom not in Washington and the dad in Wyoming, he muses, this whole ordeal might be a little more bearable. 

This is Jules' life. He's become an expert at doing homework on trains and sleeping in moving vehicles. 

In Cheyenne, Ethan tries to be a dad. You know--hunting, fishing, camping, working on the car, talking (American) football. Jules had only been about ten or so before he realized that his dad really wasn't an outdoorsman, but he kept his mouth shut and sat in the boat with a beer in his hand all the same. By thirteen, he realized that the reason his dad kept asking him to 'grade' the female sports reporters wasn't because he was actually that immature, but because he was afraid of his son being gay.

He decided to keep him in suspense, there. Didn't last long--his dad found his charcoal sketches of nude models, and discharged a sigh of relief to find that they were all quite odalisque.

In Seattle, Olivia... is kind of a mom, he guesses. Somewhere between aunt and older sister and... friend. In a way, he prefers that. Jules is no fool (despite what schoolyard taunts would lead you to believe)--he knows he's going to need some serious psychiatry later on in life. But at sixteen, you can't dwell on those things. He knows that much.

Then again, the scenery is better in Wyoming. Once you get out of Cheyenne, anyway. Sometimes, when his dad is still asleep, Jules sneaks out of the tent before sunrise and arms himself with his charcoal and paper--and draws. And draws. And draws the earth and sky into his fingers and _draws._

Not as if his dad is against the whole 'art' thing. Moreso, when his dad first caught Jules with a pencil in hand and artistic intention afoot, he got him more paper. Graph paper, notably. A ruler, protractor. He was dead set on Jules being an engineer, for some reason. When Jules asked what kind, Ethan's reply was mystifying inaudible. Jules'll take that over the shouted incredulity that was his dad's response to why he wouldn't play (American) football: "What do you mean, you want to _protect your fucking fingers?_ " Maybe Jules could have said "So I can finger my wife and we can actually please each other," but he's not the spiteful kind.

This was commonplace. Whether it was dad's house or mom's apartment, the moment he was through that door they would look at him like he needed to be deprogrammed. With the mom, Julian--modern, approachable. The dad, Julius--classic, imperious.

Just Jules, but no one ever asked him. 

Sometimes he wishes he had siblings, but then again, he thinks wryly, he wouldn't want anyone else to bear his burden.

Jules is like that. A half-martyr, at best. 

\---

For art in Wyoming, you go outside. For art in Washington, you go inside. Jules has probably spent more time in the Frye Art Museum than in his mom's apartment, and they both know that, and he gets the sense that she almost prefers it that way. 

He's already gone through the top ten museums, the underground scene, gotten to know a few of the more ambitious taggers. He's almost starting to feel like something of an _authority_ on art--what kind of authority and what kind of art he couldn't tell you, but still.

So he's surprised when he's ambling through downtown Seattle one dreary, drizzling Saturday morning and spies... a rather compact art gallery.

With the arrogance of an adolescent boy, Jules thinks, "Well, let's see what this place can show me."

He pushed open the glass double-doors, crossed the threshold and realizes that he is thoroughly outclassed.

Geometry and black and white and and unyielding angles and and unrepentant confrontational perspective and surgically clean lines so sharp you could pass through them and be bisected without knowing.

So much glass. Polished chrome, fused quartz--just so much _glass._ When the rare color appears it's like the fucking second coming of Christ. What do you call that kind of thing? Neo-futurism from some unknown dark hell? 

He stayed there a while. Not just looking... watching. And thinking that maybe he was in hell but hell was alright.

Jules was transfixed in front of a sculpture--he thought--of three figures, tangled up in each other in what he could only call a fractal orgy, suspended from the ceiling by metal so that the piece was hovering just a foot over the ground. The column of metal keeping the sculpture airborne looked remarkably like a bolt of lightning.

He looked at it.

With mild surprise, he noticed that he was slightly hard.

"What do you think of this one?"

Jules shoved his fists into his pockets so fast you'd think they lived there. "What? Of this?" He nodded to the sculpture.

"Yes, obviously," the voice responds dryly. "You've been looking at it for ten minutes."

Jules wanted to call hyperbole, but he knows when he's lost. "I, um... I think I've formed an opinion."

"And?"

So that was when Jules told this mysterious voice what he thought of the sculpture.

And silence followed.

"... That was, uh, a bit much." Something cool pooled in the pit of his stomach--embarrassment, soon to become shame. "I could've said, you know, 'It has a certain _je ne sais quoi'_ and saved you the rambling, but--"

" _Tais-toi,_ " the voice said sharply.

That did it. One year of French class and a lifetime of pride awoke. Jules turned on his heel, ready for whoever had accosted him. "What did you--"

"Your critique," she said, her lips pulling into a smirk, "was _merveilleux._ You have a good eye."

His eyes were staring a good deal at the girl in front of him.

"Uh," he said.

"If there's one thing I _despise,_ " she continued, walking past Jules and putting arms akimbo, "It's when talented people apologize for their talent. That's why there's trash on exhibit at the Met and why people like _you_ \--" She pointed a red-lacquered nail at Jules-- "let it happen."

Jules stared at the back of her head. With her hair, her clothes, her _nails,_ she seemed so out of place, here--too much color, too much vividness amongst the glass and white and black. And yet--it drew all eyes to her.

He decided to save some face, at least. "Well, you know, I don't know if I'd call myself talented," he lied.

"Liar."

Damn her.

"I know an artist when I see one. Do yourself a favor and drop the 'humbler-than-thou' act. It's not flattering."

Jules grunted. "Nice to meet you too, I guess."

The girl laughed--sweeter and clearer than he expected--and he blinked. "Victoria," she said, extending her hand with perfect composure. "The pleasure is all yours."

A heartbeat of hesitation. Jules received her hand, gripping just enough. "They call me Jules."

And that was how the Chase Space became his favorite art gallery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The second part cometh._


	12. Fall

Jules isn't the kind to have friends. He moves too often for that. He ignores messages on MySpace and texts as though it were an art. Acquaintances? Perhaps--but no more. He was and is a lonely child. He is more familiar with voices coming from headphones than from vocal chords. This has always been the case.

But he meets Victoria, and that changes.

Call it bildungsroman, call it ego salience, call it whatever you want. The name doesn't matter. It's more a feeling than anything else. A sharp-nailed fistful of feelings, a toothy mouthful of feelings, vivid and colorful and new and dangerous. 

Victoria is the agent provocateur, the psychopomp--emphasis on the pomp, but Jules' eyeballs are finely tooled for rolling anyway. She shows him Seattle in the course of a week--not Seattle the city, Seattle the idea. Seattle the canvas. They go to the underground arthouses, the hidden galleries where styles are born and die--and Victoria provides the exegesis. Or tries to--Jules interjects, and interjects often. Slowly, at first. His critiques are tenuous, wary, reminiscent of pre-Cambrian life. But the more time they share together--the more Victoria goads him--the bolder he becomes.

He's about to walk in when he spies the look on her face. "What?" 

"Starbucks? _Really?_ "

"They have free wifi, and--" He throws up a hand, perhaps a bit too dramatically. She has that effect. "Did you have somewhere else in mind? Coffee is coffee."

Victoria shakes her head, beckons with a single finger. "Such naïveté. _Viens par là, _" she says.__

__So he follows. Follows her to some obscure yet expensive coffee shop where the drinks are served in double-walled glasses._ _

__"Blackwell," he muses, thumb flicking the screen of his phone._ _

__"The one and only."_ _

__He glances up at Victoria, her chin precisely balanced upon palm, radiating... _pride_ would be a euphemism. _Smugness_ , yes, that will suffice. "So this is where you proper artists learn your tradecraft," Jules says wryly._ _

__"I like to think that I've been dazzling you with my natural talent."_ _

__"Uh huh." The cost of tuition is conspicuously absent._ _

__"From there, I'm planning on going to Parsons or the Royal. I haven't quite decided," she intones, tapping a nail against the polished steel table between them." Carmine, crimson, vermillion... what color is that--?_ _

__"There's a... community college in Cheyenne," Jules says, squinting at the pictures of smiling students. Rule of thirds applies even in the PR shots, apparently. "Laramie. Online classes, so I won't be stuck with my dad full time."_ _

__Victoria laughs--then abruptly stops upon seeing Jules' expression. She covers her mouth. "Oh my God. Oh my fucking God, you're actually serious."_ _

__"What, they allow jokes at fancy places like this?"_ _

__"Jules." Victoria leans forward, the earnestness in her voice almost unsettling. "You _can't._ "_ _

__"It's fine." He shrugs. "I'll just have an impressive portfolio on hand. I mean, did Caravaggio or, or... Rich Avedon go to some top-ten art school? Does it really matter where artists go to school, anyway?"_ _

___"Absolument."_ Ah, she's speaking French with an American accent. That means she's serious._ _

__Their drinks arrive--damn, at Starbucks they sure as Hell don't deliver to your table. "Well... I'll have to manage."_ _

__"You can't just waste your vision at--" She gestures vaguely-- "Some backwater extension of a highschool."_ _

__"I'll make some fine prints of that backwater. You can put them up on your wall in your dorm. It'll be great."_ _

__Victoria's mouth becomes a thin red line. "And then?"_ _

__"And then..." He shrugs one shoulder, this time. "I don't really know. Maybe transfer. Maybe work. I'll figure it out. It's fine."_ _

__She just looks at him. Sips at her coffee. Looks at him more._ _

__"What?"_ _

__"Oh, nothing. I'm just trying to visualize you in a room full of high school dropouts. I can't quite picture it."_ _

__Jules grunts. The scrape draws sparks from his ego--but he tamps it down. "It's not--it is what it is, Victoria. That's life. I'll be fine."_ _

__She just peers about the cafe, measuring up the clientele. There's a tightness around her eyes. Like she's blinking with nictitating membranes she remembers but doesn't have. Jules has looked at enough human faces to know that Victoria is displeased. He sighs, opens his mouth--_ _

__"No," she says sharply._ _

__A few heads turn. Jules remains very still. He can feel the veins in his neck hissing with blood._ _

__"It would be a waste. You can't be a cashier or a waiter or anything like that. Anyone can do that. _Machines_ can do that."_ _

__"It is what it is," he says quietly._ _

__"And stop saying that. It's so defeatist." She leans back into her chair, crosses her arms. "You know what they talk about at Blackwell? Helvetica. Photoshop. Filters. Selfies on Facebook. Shit. Anyone can be an 'artist,' now--and now it doesn't mean a fucking thing."_ _

__"Who cares?"_ _

__"I do--" She aims a finger between his eyes-- "and you do!"_ _

__"You--" Jules unclenches his teeth. "You just met me."_ _

__The conviction wavers for a moment, but returns, resolute. "Oh, I've noticed the way you look at art. The way you talk about it. You've been shitting on pop art for the past week. You're _real._ "_ _

__And there it is--he's been had. Someone looked at Jules and saw all the way through. It's a horrific feeling--cold, dry, naked. He looks away, sees people staring, looks down instead. He glares at his dark reflection in the coffee. "My parents don't own a gallery. I didn't go to private school. I don't have... connections. This is all I have."_ _

__As soon as he's said it, heard himself say the words--he thinks on what he is. Sixteen year old boy, resigned to an unknown life and an unknown death, little joy in either._ _

__Victoria's lips quirk, and he sees teeth._ _

__\---_ _

__It's not long later that an envelope arrives at Jules' place--well, Jules' mom's place. Thick, course paper. Addressed to him--not Julian, not Julius, but Jules, the man. Upon the red wax seal is impressed an illuminated 'B.'_ _

__"Oh, fuck," he says._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A third? I suppose. Writing these characters gets no less strange with time._
> 
> _Adequate characterization? Inadequate? Let me know._


	13. Plateau

Put someone in an empty, enclosed space long enough and they come to certain realizations about themselves. This is self-evident--exiles and hermits alike have shown us this. The monastery is upon the mountaintop, not within the metro.

So there's something Jules comes to realize when he's sitting in his dorm room at Blackwell, silence all around him, the deepening of dusk making the shapes of light on his carpet slowly fade.

It's nice to be alone.

\---

Victoria inducts him into her circle of friends with so little ceremony Jules wonders if they're aware of him. Then again, Jules doesn't know what a circle of friends looks like--at best he'd been section of a crescent of people of similar interests.

But he falls into the vortex without the jump as if weighted with lead and feathers. He doesn't feel the need to keep his back so straight or shoulders so square. Of course, Victoria and Taylor take him out a few times to the nearest boutique ("Because the mall is too mainstream for you, isn't it?" Jules notes dryly) to try and instill within him some sense of fashion; something beyond military surplus store and garage sale. Reforming Jules into a proper metrosexual will be a long-term project.

At the very least he cuts his hair so you can see the contours of his face. Shaves more than once a month, like he means it. Stops casting his eyes to the ground whenever someone looks at him on the sidewalk.

He goes to the football games (which he had never done at public school), shows the correctly measured amount of enthusiasm, goes to the parties, the afterparties, learns how to drunkenly brood and pseudophilosophize after the afterparty. It doesn't come naturally, per se, but it's no less alien than the other social norms he had been expected to follow.

Classes are hard, admittedly. Above-average in the public schools of Washington and Wisconsin translates to just barely passable in the ecology of private tutors and extracurriculars--but his Vortex comrades help, and by help that means cheat, and by cheat to learn how to make it in the real world. He turns down the Adderall--he values his creativity more than his grades.

Nathan respects that, he thinks. He spots Nathan looking over his work--eyes narrowed, pupils dilated. Jules can't help but appreciate Nathan's eye, as well. Not the way everyone else praises his work--he can see it for what it is, between the shadow and light, reflections betraying yet another image. 

He cements a place within the Vortex Club quickly. By his own merits? Probably not. Proximity to Victoria, yes, and his uncanny ability to banter with her, coming precariously close to insult, without quite waking the dragon. One would think they had been friends for years, the way they lazily jab at each other back in forth in French, in an indican haze, draped across furniture or other warm bodies.

A chuckle from Hayden. "You're kinda like Rachel, like that."

"Who?"

"You'll meet her."

\---

He walks into Victoria's room, shopping bag in his hands.

"If you think I'm going to wear _leather pants--_ "

He stops midsentence.

"Yes?" she says, annoyance tinging her tone. She finishes clasping her bra.

His brain ignites once more. "... then you're fucking mistaken," he finishes, albeit with less effect than he would've liked.

Victoria shrugs, turning around to pull on a pair of sharp slacks. Jules turns too. "Then at the very least wear the black jeans."

"Yeah," he says, looking at anything else. 

"Belt and shoes match," she calls out after him as he goes.

\---

It's not so much that Jules dislikes Johns. Well, he dislikes that they share an initial letter--it'd be nice if he was the only capital J in the Vortex club--but that's trivial. It's moreso that Jules... can't quite get a sense of who Johns is. Or _what,_ for that matter.

Talking to Johns is like shouting into an open cave--all you get back is what you expected, albeit quieter and less satisfying. He is large and empty and leads to fuck knows where.

In the Vortex Club, there are those who lead and those who follow. Followers aren't of any less worth--just different. Specialization of labor, really.

But Johns... doesn't lead, or follow. Jules isn't really sure what he does, aside from exist. Well, Johns is Courtney's boyfriend. And he's on the football team, but that's hardly guaranteed entry. Victoria and Nathan and Hayden tolerate him, so he must have some hidden redeeming quality.

One day, he sees Johns carrying around a cardboard box. Kate Marsh is ahead of him, carefully pinning flyers for her 'Prayer Group' to one corkboard after another.

Jules simply watches.

\---

Jules has nothing against Kate Marsh and her piety. People--well, most people--need something to believe in. Gods, goddesses, fate, an underworld, objective morality. Something that makes their suffering now worth it. Who can blame them?

But not for Jules. His mom didn't care much about religion--she took the 'spiritual' route--and his dad... well, that was complex. His father's desire to be moral conflicted greatly with his desire to be no one's bitch--gods included. Maybe there was someone in the Norse or Egyptian pantheon for him, were he daring enough to look.

\---

"Uh... hey, Jules."

He looks over. Johns is standing there awkwardly, card in one hand and pen in the other.

"I--" He looks down at the card. "We were going to visit Kate. At the hospital," he adds, as if clarification were needed. "You wanna sign?"

Jules just looks at him for a moment. And then: "Think that'll make her not want to kill herself?"

A silence grows between them. Heavy, angling downward. "It's a gesture of goodwill, Jules," he says, tone somewhere between exasperation and honest explanation.

It's so condescending without meaning to be it makes Jules grits his teeth.

Johns swallows. "I've read--"

"You read a lot."

"--that it's best that people who are depressed aren't alone. Or, uh, at least, not alone, figuratively." 

"You were there, weren't you?"

"What?"

Jules crosses his arms, leans against the wall. "At the party. Where they shot Kate's video." He shrugs. "Kind of ironic."

"I wasn't there," he said. "I didn't watch it. Don't want to."

"Didn't say you did."

A pause. "Did you?"

"Does it matter?"

"I asked you a question."

Jules has never seen Johns mad. He's pretty sure on the color wheel of emotion that Johns possesses 'mild curiosity' and 'mild contentment,' at most. But there it is--the voice, slower, deeper. Each word born with deliberation. Is this what anger looks like?

"Just the beginning," Jules says, more rushed than he expects, "before..." He waves a hand. "You know."

Johns nods. Looks away. " _You_ were there."

"So?"

They look at each other. 

"I was..." He squints. "With Juliet. Talking with Juliet." That sativa he had sourced from Nathan had been something else. "If you think I did anything to Kate--"

"Okay, okay. Shit." Johns sighs. "Sign or not?"

A pause, and then: "When... were you planning on visiting?"

\---

He feels the bubbles of air leaving his lungs, one by one.

Burning to death or drowning... he had dwelt on that often, in the past. Both poetic and painful in equal measure.

Or so he thought. Now--now it was just water, ordinary water, with him in it. No art here. No beauty here. 

As his thoughts cloud over, he thinks of his parents.

He thinks of Kate.

He thinks of Victoria.

_I want you to live,_ he thinks, and closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Halfway done, if even that, so it's granite-rough. But Jules' time is up._
> 
> _But I didn't want to hold out on you, you see. Comment away._


End file.
